Monday, February 16, 2015

Putin ‘Will Not Advance Further’ in Ukraine, Kyiv Journalist Says

Paul
Goble

Staunton, February 16 – Many in
Ukraine and elsewhere are fearful that Vladimir Putin will expand his
aggression into other regions of Ukraine, but, according to Ivan Yakovina of “Novoye
Vremya,” he does not at least at the present time have “the strength, the motive
or the opportunity” to do so.

There are six compelling reasons why
this is so, Yakovina says, and to those who say that Putin is irrational and
therefore will go ahead anyway, he responds that Putin may be able to “run from
reality” for a time, but eventually “reality catches up” – and it will catch up
to him in “two to three months” (nv.ua/opinion/yakovina/pochemu-putin-ne-poydet-dalshe-34627.html).

Concerns that Putin won’t stop are “completely
rational and sensible,” Yakovina says. “We all have already more than once been
witness to the Kremlin raising the stakes, beginning new attacks in one or
another direction and sometimes with the direct participation of Russian
military units.”

Russian propaganda and Russia’s
agents in the Donbas so often suggest that Moscow could take Kyiv or any other
part of Ukraine whenever it wants to that some have come to accept this as true
and even inevitable. But there are six serious obstacles to that happening, and
it is important to take them into consideration too.

The first obstacle is within Russia
itself. “However much Russian propaganda tries” to suggest otherwise, Russians
are fed up with the fighting. “They would with enormous joy receive the news
that Kyiv had ‘let go’ the DNR and the LNR. In their eyes, this would be a pure
victory.”

But inside Russia, Yakovina argues, “the
popularity of continuing military actions after such an obvious victory would
be minimal.”

The second obstacle is diplomatic.
Putin very much wants to have direct dialogue with Western leaders. He got that
at Minsk although his dreams of “sitting at one table with Barack Obama” and
discussing the future of Ukraine have not yet been realized. Any broader attack
on Ukraine would end both possibilities, and “Putin is not prepared” for that.

The third
obstacle is foreign economics. Putin wants them eased or lifted. If he
broadened his attacks in Ukraine they would be “intensified many times over.”
Given the current rapid decline of Russia’s GDP, that price would be “unacceptable”
to him and to Russians more generally.

The fourth
obstacle is related to these: the price of controlling Donetsk and Luhansk is
much lower than would be the price of controlling any other part of Ukraine.
There would be fewer supporters of Moscow and far more opponents of a Russian
occupation direct or as in the Donbas indirect.

Consequently,
if Putin were to advance further, he would face “a situation different in
principle” with the one he now faces in the Donbas. A partisan war would start,
there would be massive civil disobedience, and he would need “an enormous repressive
apparatus.”He doesn’t have the money, the people or the desire to create such a
thing.

The fifth
obstacle is related: “If the territory under the control of the militants
increased significantly and there were no hopes for financing from Kyiv, then
almost immediately there would be a humanitarian catastrophe and a social
explosion,” Yakovina continues.Moreover,
in such a case, Moscow would find it difficult if not impossible to “blame”
Kyiv.

And the sixth
obstacle, the one that the Ukrainian journalist suggests is the most important,
is that Moscow would find it difficult to organize and carry out a military
advance. Its troops have not performed all that well against a determined
Ukrainian army, and they would do less and less well and suffer more losses the
further they were from Russia’s borders.

These
considerations apply equally to any talk about opening a land corridor to
Crimea. Moreover, Yakovina says, there is an additional reason for thinking
Moscow could not advance in that direction easily. All Soviet and Russian
military doctrine is based on the use of railroads – and “along the Azov coast,
there are none.”

But looming
behind these six reasons why Putin won’t go further are his strategic goals,
which do not include the seizure of Ukrainian territory as such but rather “the
establishment of control over Kyiv with the help of ‘a special status’ for a
certain territory completely under Moscow’s political control.”

“The size of
this territory does not have particular significance,” he suggests. Indeed, it
may very well be that “the more compact it will be, the better.” That also
means that if Ukraine were to give up its claim to these territories, Putin’s
plan would fail – and that he would have more reason for invading some other part
of Ukraine, whatever the costs.

Unfortunately,
the Kyiv journalist says, one has to deal with the reality that Putin acts
irrationally and is certainly not a reader of “Novoye vremya.”But the key fact is that “an individual
living in a world of illusions, sooner or later encounters reality,” however
much he seeks to run from it.

In the current
case, that encounter will take the following forms: “a decline in his poll
numbers, international isolation and sanctions, the collapse of the Russian
economy, enormous losses at the front, a partisan movement, a humanitarian
catastrophe and risings in the Donbas and in Russia, hatred from the oligarch,
and at the end” an attack on his person.